HX64094022 
R 1 54.  B49  N48         Memorial  meeting  in 


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THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

ASTOR  LENOX  AND  TILDEN    FOUNDATIONS 


MEMORIAL    MEETING 

IN   HONOR   OF   THE   LATE 

DR.    JOHN    SHAW    BILLINGS, 

APRIL  25,   1913 


NEW  YORK 
1913 


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THE   NEW  YORK   PUBLIC   LIBRARY 

ASTOR  LENOX  AND  TILDEN    FOUNDATIONS 


MEMORIAL    MEETING 

IN    HONOR    OF   THE    LATE 

DR.    JOHN    SHAW    BILLINGS, 

APRIL  25,   1913 


NEW  YORK 
1913 


Doctor  John  Shaw  Billings 

director  of  the  new  york  public  library 

1896-1913 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2010  with  funding  from 

Open  Knowledge  Commons 


http://www.archive.org/details/memorialmeetingiOOnewy 


MEMORIAL    MEETING    IN     HONOR    OF    THE    LATE 
DR.   JOHN    SHAW   BILLINGS,   APRIL   25,    1913 


As  a  tribute  to  the  place  in  the  world  of  letters  and  science  held  by 
the  late  Dr.  John  S.  Billings,  Director  of  The  New  York  Public  Library 
from  1896  until  his  death  on  March  11,  1913,  the  Trustees  of  the  Library 
invited  several  hundred  of  his  friends  to  meet  with  them  on  the  afternoon 
of  Friday,  April  25,  1913,  to  listen  to  addresses  by  certain  of  his  friends  and 
co-workers. 

The  meeting  was  called  to  order  at  4  o'clock  in  the  Stuart  gallery  of 
the  central  building  by  John  L.  Cadwalader,  president  of  the  Board  of 
Trustees.    With  him  on  the  platform  sat  the  following  persons : 

The  Right  Rev.  David  H.  Greer,  bishop  of  New  York,  Dr.  S.  Weir 
Mitchell,  Sir  William  Osier,  Dr.  William  H.  Welch,  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie, 
Mr.  Richard  R.  Bowker;  Messrs.  William  W.  Appleton,  Cleveland  H. 
Dodge,  Frederic  R.  Halsey,  John  Henry  Hammond,  Morgan  J.  O'Brien, 
Stephen  H.  Olin,  William  Barclay  Parsons,  George  L.  Rives,  Charles 
Howland  Russell,  Edward  W.  Sheldon,  George  W.  Smith,  Frederick 
Sturges,  and  Henry  W.  Taf t  of  the  Board  of  Trustees ;  The  Rev.  Joseph 
H.  McMahon  and  Mr.  D.  Phoenix  Ingraham  of  the  Committee  on  circula- 
tion; Mr.  Edward  G.  Kennedy  of  the  Advisory  committee  on  prints; 
Major  Henry  Lee  Higginson,  and  Mr.  Edwin  H.  Anderson,  acting 
Director  of  the  Library. 

Mr.  Cadwalader:  We  are  met  to  commemorate  the  life  and 
services  of  Dr.  John  Shaw  Billings.  Certain  friends  and  co-workers  with 
Dr.  Billings  will  speak  of  him  in  the  various  walks  of  life  in  which  they 
and  he  have  been  engaged,  and  these  gentlemen  will  speak  in  the  order, 
so  to  speak,  of  seniority,  in  that  Dr.  Mitchell  will  speak  concerning  his 
services  in  the  Army  and  others  as  to  various  works  in  which  they  and 
he  have  been  co-workers. 

We  will  first  ask  the  Bishop  of  New  York  to  offer  prayer. 

PRAYER  BY  THE  RIGHT  REVEREND  DAVID  H.  GREER 
BISHOP  OF  NEW  YORK 

Let  US  pray.  Almighty  God  and  Heavenly  Father,  from  Whom 
cometh  every  good  and  perfect  gift,  we  adore  and  magnify  Thy  Name  for 
all  the  great  things  which  Thou  hast  done  for  us  in  this  favored  land; 

[3] 


4  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

for  the  civil  and  religious  privileges  which  we  enjoy ;  for  the  opportunities 
of  human  development  and  enlightenment,  and  all  the  means  whereby 
we  may  grow  in  wisdom  and  in  the  knowledge  of  the  truth.  Especially 
do  we  remember  today  the  labors  of  Thy  servant  whose  unselfish  devotion 
to  this  institution  has  done  so  much  to  make  it  a  source  of  light  and  lead- 
ing to  the  people  of  this  City ;  to  shield  and  protect  them  from  ignorance 
and  error;  to  instruct  them  in  the  ways  of  righteousness  and  virtue;  to 
illuminate  their  minds;  to  purify  their  hearts;  to  give  them  a  clear  dis- 
cernment of  the  bright  elements  in  their  daily  lives,  so  that  in  all  their 
social  and  civic  fellowships,  they  might  mingle  together  on  the  high  level 
of  their  better  selves,  and  thus  more  and  more  to  liberate  and  free  them 
with  the  freedom  of  the  truth.  For  all  that  he  has  done  and  contributed  to 
this  end,  whose  memory  today  we  cherish,  we  would  make  our  grateful 
acknowledgment  to  Thee  in  Whom  all  human  creatures  live  and  from 
Whom  they  receive  their  wisdom  and  their  power  to  serve  their  fellow- 
men  and  praying  that  what  for  us  Thou  hast  done  through  him,  we  may 
show  our  thankfulness  not  only  with  our  lips  but  in  better  and  nobler 
lives,  we  ask  it  in  the  Name  of  our  Saviour,  Jesus  Christ.     Amen. 

Mr.  Cadwalader:  I  have  the  honor  to  present  to  you  one  of  the 
oldest  and  closest  friends  of  Dr.  Billings,  Dr.  S.  Weir  Mitchell  of 
Philadelphia. 

ADDRESS    BY    DR.    S.   WEIR    MITCHELL 

We  are  met  here  to-day  to  do  honor  to  a  man  whose  modesty  pre-« 
vented  the  general  public  from  ever  understanding  how  remarkable 
was  the  personality  of  John  Shaw  Billings.  It  is  in  itself  a  tribute  to 
him  that  it  becomes  necessary  to  divide  the  grateful  office  of  praise 
and  to  invite  several  persons  to  commemorate  on  this  notable  occasion 
the  various  forms  of  usefulness  which  characterized  his  life  of  laborious 
days.  We  praise  those  who  through  years  of  work  attain  a  high  level 
of  achievement  in  any  one  direction.  But  this  friend  of  whom  I  speak, 
a  person  of  many  competencies,  lavished  on  his  way  through  life  oppor- 
tunities for  wealth  and  fame,  any  one  of  which  would  have  tempted  a 
man  more  eager  than  he  for  riches  or  more  avid  of  renown. 

There  are  those  here  who  will  speak  of  my  friend  and  what  he  did 
after  he  gave  up  the  varied  service  of  army  life.  To  me  is  left  —  and 
had  been  better  left  to  some  brother  surgeon  —  the  story  of  his  career 
of  remarkable  distinction  in  the  army.  To  enable  you  to  realize  how 
early  was  the  development  of  qualities  which  made  him  great,  I  must 
go  back  to  his  youth.  The  whole  story  has  unusual  interest,  and  lika 
the  rest  of  this  wonderful  life  should  be  told  at  length  in  a  biography, 
which  would  be  brilliant  with  examples  of  how  to  overcome  obstacles. 


MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  HONOR  OF  DR.  JOHN  SHAW  BILLINGS  5 

Without  some  knowledge  of  that  you  have  not  the  whole  of  John  Billings. 
It  falls  to  me  to  condense  this  as  a  necessary  prelude  to  what  I  have  to  say 
of  his  surgical  career. 

The  man  that  was  to  be  is  revealed  in  the  boy  who  at  fifteen  from  his 
scant  savings  bought  a  Latin  dictionary  and  grammar  and  resolutely 
taught  himself  that  tongue,  in  order  that  he  might  make  out  Latin  quota- 
tions he  came  upon  in  reading,  which  already  was  beginning  to  be 
extensive.  With  small  means,  by  acting  as  a  tutor  in  the  summers,  he 
passed  through  Miami  University,  receiving  the  A.B.  degree  in  1857. 
In  his  last  year  at  college  he  added  to  his  resources  in  a  rather  singular 
way.  A  man  who  was  exhibiting  pictures  on  a  screen  was  so  evidently 
embarrassed  by  the  need  to  explain  them,  that  Billings  offered  to  assist 
him,  and  during  the  summer  went  with  this  showman  from  place  to 
place  lecturing  on  whatever  scenes  were  exhibited.  In  this  way  he 
acquired  enough  to  carry  him  through  his  academic  work  and  to  enter 
the  Medical  College  of  Ohio,  whence  he  was  graduated  in  1860.  Dur- 
ing the  period  of  medical  study  he  was  enabled  to  pay  his  way  by  taking 
care  of  the  dissecting  rooms  and  by  living  in  the  college.  Of  these 
years  of  privation  he  spoke  to  me  once  or  twice,  with  assurance  of  his 
belief  that  he  never  recovered  from  the  effect  of  one  winter  in  which  he 
lived  on  seventy-five  cents  a  week,  subsisting  chiefly  on  milk  and  eggs. 

After  completing  his  course  in  medicine  in  1860,  he  became  more 
at  ease  when  for  two  years  he  acted  as  a  paid  demonstrator  of  anatomy, 
and  also  served  in  two  hospitals.  There  is  a  pleasant  little  personal 
story  of  those  days  of  training  illustrative  thus  early  of  his  winning 
ways.  The  nursing  being  conducted  by  Rornan  Catholic  Sisters,  his 
gentle  gravity,  the  look  of  mild  melancholy  —  never  quite  lost  in  after 
days,  the  lambent  blue  eyes  and  a  certain  sweetness  of  expression, 
caused  him  to  be  spoken  of  now  and  then  by  these  ladies  as  the  "St. 
John  of  the  Hospital,"  which  certainly  would  have  amused  him,  but 
which  was  a  tribute  of  admiration  not  to  be  won  by  mere  looks  alone. 

When  the  war  broke  out,  he  had  been  offered  the  certainties  of  an 
assistantship  to  a  leading  surgeon  in  Cincinnati.  He  felt,  however,  so 
earnestly  that  the  country  needed  his  services,  that  he  declined  civil 
practice,  and  after  an  examination  in  Washington  before  a  board  of 
army  surgeons,  passing  first  of  his  class,  was  commissioned  as  assistant- 
surgeon  in  the  regular  army  in  April,  1862.  To  sum  up  briefly  his  official 
positions:  He  became  captain  by  promotion  in  1866,  major  and  surgeon 
in  December  1876,  lieutenant-colonel  and  deputy  surgeon-general  in 
June  1894,  and  was  retired  from  active  service  in  October  1895.  He 
received  brevets  of  major  and  lieutenant-colonel  for  gallant  and  meri- 
torious service. 


6  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

He  was  twenty-four  years  old  when  he  entered  the  army.  His 
first  duty,  while  waiting  for  his  commission,  was  to  serve  under  the 
president  of  the  examining  board  at  the  Union  Hospital,  Georgetown. 
At  once  his  extraordinary  manual  skill  and  boldness  in  dealing  with 
difficult  cases  attracted  the  attention  of  the  surgeon-general,  who  put 
him  in  charge  of  the  Cliffborne  Hospital  near  Georgetown.  This  hos- 
pital, once  a  barrack,  as  I  understand  it,  he  altered  and  rebuilt,  and 
there  dealt  with  many  of  the  wounded  from  the  seven  days'  fight  about 
Richmond,  having  numberless  Union  and  Confederate  soldiers  under 
his  care.  Here  as  elsewhere  he  did  nearly  all  of  the  operative  work. 
Then  followed  a  series  of  distinguished  appointments.  The  first  took 
him  to  the  West  Philadelphia  Satterlee  Hospital,  where  were  some 
thousands  of  beds  filled  with  sick  or  wounded  soldiers.  In  March,  1863, 
he  reported  for  duty  to  the  Army  of  the  Potomac.  In  anticipation  of 
the  fight  at  Chancellorsville,  he  located  the  hospital  of  the  second  divi- 
sion of  the  Fifth  Corps.  It  was,  however,  so  near  the  firing  line  that  it 
was  shattered  by  a  shell,  and  he  fell  back  several  hundred  yards.  Here 
for  hours  the  wounded  were  treated,  Billings  performing  many  of  what 
we  call  major  operations,  until  he  was  obliged  to  remove  his  wounded 
to  the  Chancellorsville  House.  This  position  also  coming  under  artillery 
fire  was  evacuated,  and  one  of  his  assistants.  Dr.  Hichborne,  was  killed. 
Another  hospital  was  improvised  six  hundred  yards  back.  During  these 
changes,  besides  the  time  given  to  operations  and  the  dressing  of  wounds. 
Dr.  Billings  had  the  terrible  problem  of  moving  again  and  again  the 
wounded  of  a  retreating  army,  and  how  he  dealt  with  those  dangerous 
situations  in  a  wonderfully  efficient  manner  he  tells  very  modestly  in 
one  of  his  numberless  contributions  to  the  ''Medical  History  of  the 
War  of  the  Rebellion." 

At  Gettysburg,  being  attached  to  the  Seventh  Infantry,  he  estab- 
lished his  hospital  in  a  stone  house  and  barn  back  of  Round  Top.  As  he 
rode  up  to  take  possession,  he  was  for  a  time  under  heavy  fire  from  the 
enemy.  During  one  entire  day  and  all  night  he  and  the  other  medical 
officers  were  afoot  doing  operations  and  caring  for  seven  hundred  and 
fifty  wounded  men.  On  the  following  morning  this  hospital  was  evacu- 
ated under  fire.  Concerning  the  few  days  which  followed  the  victory 
we  have  his  own  account  of  his  resourceful  way  of  organizing  hospital 
service,  foraging  for  his  patients,  dressing  wounds,  and  in  between  times 
doing  the  gravest  operations,  until  even  with  his  amazing  capital  of 
energy  he  was  utterly  exhausted.  His  account  of  this  service  as  told 
in  the  medical  annals  of  the  war  would  be  worth  republication.  The 
terrible  nature  of  the  work  here  and  elsewhere  so  affected  his  health, 
that  he  had  to  ask  for  thirty  days'  sick  leave.     Thenceforward  his  ser- 


MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  HONOR  OF  DR.  JOHN  SHAW  BILLINGS  J 

vice  was  chiefly  in  hospitals  at  various  places.  He  was  also  called  upon 
to  collate  statistics  and  data  relative  to  the  medical  service  of  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac  for  the  great  medical  history  of  the  war. 

In  December  1864,  Dr.  Billings  was  ordered  to  the  Surgeon- 
General's  Office.  War  service  in  the  field  was  now  over  for  him,  and 
with  a  record  of  efficiency,  resourcefulness  and  competence  of  head 
and  hand,  in  the  field  and  in  hospitals,  he  was  in  a  position  to  have 
entered  into  practice  as  a  great  surgeon  in  any  one  of  our  large  cities 
and  to  have  won  distinction  and  fortune.  He  seems,  however,  to  have 
been  attached  to  the  army,  and  to  have  been  so  immediately  understood 
that  in  the  office  of  the  Surgeon-General  he  had  charge  of  matters  per- 
taining to  all  contract  physicians,  the  organization  of  the  Veteran 
Reserve  Corps,  the  enormous  accounts  of  hospitals  which  were  disburs- 
ing thousands  of  dollars,  and  other  minor  duties.  He  had,  too,  the  care 
of  the  pathological  museum  created  by  Surgeon-General  Hammond  and 
by  Dr.  Billings'  friend  Surgeon  John  H.  Brinton.  The  want  of  books 
for  consultation  was  felt  at  once  by  this  eager  scholar.  Fortunately,  at 
the  close  of  the  war  in  1865,  the  hospitals  turned  in  to  the  Surgeon- 
General's  Office  something  like  eighty-five  thousand  dollars  of  their  sav- 
ings, and  this  he  was  allowed  to  use  for  the  library,  which  then  began  to 
grow  under  his  fostering  care,  until  it  attained  unlooked  for  dimensions 
and  made  necessary  the  time-saving  catalogue,  of  which  others  will  speak, 
but  which  led  him  long  afterwards  to  be  called  to  the  distinguished  posi- 
tion which  has  left  in  these  halls  memories  of  efficiency  and  varied 
usefulness,  and  I  trust  will  be  remembered  among  you  as  an  example  for 
those  who  follow  him. 

What  is  most  striking  in  this  career  is  simply  its  unfailing  industry 
and  singular  variety  of  competence.  Of  this  I  could  not  speak  fitly  with- 
out mention  of  the  various  lines  of  work  which  followed  his  success 
in  Washington.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  this  man  was  not  only  a  person 
of  very  great  intellect,  with  a  mind  having  the  natural  history  quality 
of  capacity  for  classification,  but  also  the  power  to  combine  when  in 
command  here  and  elsewhere  the  strictest  discipline  with  the  utmost 
kindness.  I  rise  from  the  contemplation  of  this  much  loved  man  with 
a  feeling  that  what  made  him  so  capable  was  not  only  originative  genius, 
with  talent  for  the  most  industrious  application  of  his  many  mental 
resources,  but  above  all  that  group  of  qualities  which  we  sum  up  in  the 
word  character  and  which  stands  out  clearly  in  many  great  lives  as  a 
generous  encouragement  to  men  who  feel  they  are  not  so  productively 
great  as  others. 

I  may  be  pardoned  a  personal  word.  My  love  and  admiration  for 
this  man  began  early  in  the  war,  when  my  brother,  a  young  surgeon, 
fell  ill,  and  finally  died.     He  was  cared  for  with  the  utmost  tenderness 


8  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

by  the  man  whose  death  we  now  regret.  This  was  the  beginning  of  a 
friendship  which  lasted  without  the  slightest  disturbance  and  with  much 
mutual  benefit  up  to  the  time  of  his  death.  I  find  pleasant  to  recall  a 
few  words  he  said  to  me  not  many  weeks  before  he  died.  I  had  been 
asking  him  how  many  degrees  he  had  received,  and  when  we  began 
to  count  the  LL.D.s  and  the  D.C.L.s,  he  laughed  and  said,  with  his 
note  of  humor,  "Yes,  that  is  my  principal  title  to  be  considered  a  man  of 
letters."  Then  he  paused  a  little  and  added,  "There  is  one  thing  I  value 
far  more  than  these,  because  as  life  went  on  the  honors  which  fell  to  my 
share  seemed  to  me  unimportant  compared  to  the  friendships  which 
I  have  been  so  happy  as  to  gather  on  the  way."  I  gladly  recall,  but 
cannot  venture  to  repeat,  his  words  of  kindly  remembrance,  and  how  he 
ended  by  saying  how  warm  was  his  affection  for  some  of  the  men  whose 
presence  here  to-day  forbids  me  to  mention  their  names. 

It  has  been  hard  for  me  to  say  these  few  words  while  omitting  a  great 
deal  that  was  personal  and  interesting.  It  is  proper  and  fitting,  however, 
as  I  close,  to  say  how  much  thought  John  Billings  gave  to  you  of  the 
library  staff  who  aided  him  in  his  triumphal  management  of  his  final  task, 
and  how  deeply  he  resented  any  failure  to  recognize  the  loyal  support 
which  you  gave  him. 

Mr.  Cadwalader:  I  have  the  pleasure  to  present  to  you  Sir 
William  Osier,  Regius  Professor  of  Medicine  in  Oxford  University,  a 
friend  of  Dr.  Billings,  and  a  friend  of  all  good  learning. 

ADDRESS    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    OSLER 

I  speak  of  Dr.  Billings  with  the  reverence  inspired  by  a  friendship 
of  nearly  thirty  years,  and  I  bring  officially  the  appreciative  recognition 
of  his  great  work  of  the  Bibliographical  Society  of  Great  Britain  of  which 
he  was  a  much  esteemed  honorary  member  and  of  which  I  happen  to  be 
President. 

Of  only  one  aspect  of  Dr.  Billings'  work  I  can  speak  with  full  knowl- 
edge. As  a  medical  bibliographer  he  occupies  a  unique  position.  There 
have  been  great  students  of  medical  literature  since  Conrad  Gesner,  the 
Swiss  Pliny,  wrote  his  famous  Bibliotheca  Universalis  —  Haller,  Plouc- 
quet,  Haeser,  Young,  Eloy,  Boyle,  Forbes,  and  Watt  —  but  their  labors 
are  Lilliputian  in  comparison  with  the  Gargantuan  undertaking  which 
occupied  the  spare  moments  in  some  thirty  years  of  Dr.  Billings'  life. 
It  is  interesting  that  the  conception  of  a  great  bibliography  should 
have  come  to  him  while  a  young  man.  In  a  paper  on  early  reminiscences 
he  speaks  of  an  aspiration  "to  establish  for  the  use  of  American  physicians 
a  fairly  complete  medical  library,  and  in  connection  with  this  to  prepare 


MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  HONOR  OF  DR.  JOHN  SHAW  BILLINGS  9 

a  comprehensive  catalogue  and  index  which  should  spare  medical 
teachers  and  writers  the  drudgery  of  consulting  ten  thousand  or  more 
different  indexes  or  turning  over  the  leaves  of  as  many  volumes  to  find 
a  dozen  or  so  references  of  which  they  might  be  in  search." 

The  opportunity  came  in  1864  when  he  was  assigned  to  duty  in  the 
Surgeon  General's  Office.  There  had  been  a  few  volumes  connected 
with  the  Office  since  the  days  of  Surgeon  General  Lovell  in  1836,  and 
during  the  war  additions  were  made  by  Surgeon  General  Hammond 
and  by  Doctors  Otis  and  Woodward  —  names  memorable  in  the  history 
of  American  medicine;  but  supported  ably  in  his  efforts  by  successive 
Surgeons  General  and  liberal  grants  from  Congress  Dr.  Billings  was 
able  in  a  few  years  to  collect  one  of  the  largest  and  most  complete 
medical  libraries  in  the  world.  In  1895  when  he  retired  there  were  308,445 
volumes  and  pamphlets  and  4,335  portraits;  and  at  the  present  time 
the  library  is  the  largest  of  its  kind  in  the  world,  containing  upwards  of 
half  a  million  volumes  and  more  than  5,000  portraits. 

A  single  volume  catalogue  was  issued  in  1872,  a  three  volume  one 
in  1873-74,  and  in  1876  his  big  plan  took  shape  in  a  'specimen  fasciculus' 
of  a  new  catalogue.  After  four  years  of  hard  work  in  which  he  was 
greatly  helped  by  Dr.  Robert  Fletcher  volume  I  of  the  "Index  Catalogue" 
was  issued  and  thereafter  year  by  year  volumes  appeared  with  extraor- 
dinary regularity,  and  in  1895  series  I  was  completed — fifteen  great 
volumes  each  of  nearly  1,000  pages.  No  undertaking  in  bibliography  of 
the  same  magnitude  dealing  with  a  special  subject  had  ever  been  issued, 
and  its  extraordinary  value  was  at  once  appreciated  all  over  the  world. 
The  second  series  followed  the  first  and  is  now  rapidly  approaching 
completion. 

While  the  Catalogue  only  represents  the  contents  of  the  Surgeon 
General's  Library  it  really  is  an  exhaustive  index  of  medical  literature. 
So  general  were  Dr.  Billings'  interests  that  all  departments  of  medicine 
are  represented,  and  there  is  not  a  subject,  as  there  is  scarcely  an  author 
of  note  ancient  or  modern  not  in  the  catalogue. 

For  example,  a  few  years  ago  Dr.  Aldis  Wright  of  Cambridge  asked 
me  if  I  could  help  him  in  certain  references  to  obscure  medical  writers 
referred  to  in  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  of  which  he  could  find 
no  trace  in  British  libraries,  the  references  in  which  he  was  tracking  to 
their  sources.  I  took  the  list  to  Dr.  Fletcher.  Every  one  was  in  the 
Library. 

The  catalogue  has  in  high  degree  the  two  essentials  of  a  good  bibli- 
ography —  comprehensiveness  and  accuracy.  Taking  the  two  series  for 
reference  purposes  there  has  never  been  issued  a  work  so  generally 
useful  to  the  profession.     Take  any  subject  you  wish  from  Dreams 


10  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

to  Dizziness  from  Coprolalia  to  Suicide  the  literature  is  given  in  a  full 
and  systematic  manner.  If  you  desire  to  look  up  the  biography  of  any 
man  in  medicine  or  in  science  from  Hippocrates  to  Koch,  the  dates  are 
there  and  the  necessary  information.  The  marvellous  accuracy  has 
always  been  a  wonder  to  me.  In  the  many  thousands  of  references  I 
have  made  to  the  volumes  I  do  not  think  I  have  noted  more  than  one  or 
two  mistakes.  A  curious  one,  by  the  way,  was  that  which  has  sent 
our  beloved  Nestor,  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell,  down  the  ages  with  a  wrong 
prenomen. 

In  1879  a  monthly  supplement  to  the  "Index  Catalogue"  was  begun 
as  the  "Index  Medicus,"  a  publication  of  the  greatest  value  to  students, 
which  is  now  continued  by  the  Carnegie  Institution  of  Washington. 
There  is  no  better  float  through  posterity  than  to  be  the  author  of  a 
good  bibliography.  Scores  know  Conrad  Gesner  by  the  "Bibliotheca" 
who  never  saw  the  "Historia  Animalium."  A  hundred  consult  Haller's 
bibliographies  for  one  that  looks  at  his  other  works,  and  years  after  the 
iniquity  of  oblivion  has  covered  Dr.  Billings'  work  in  the  army,  as  an 
organizer  in  connection  with  hospitals,  and  even  his  relation  to  the  great 
Library,  the  great  Index  will  remain  an  enduring  monument  to  his  fame. 

Mr.  Cadwalader:  I  have  the  honor  to  present  to  you  Dr. 
William  H.  Welch,  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  University,  Baltimore,  long  a 
co-worker  and  friend  of  Dr.  Billings. 

ADDRESS    BY    DR.    WILLIAM    H.    WELCH 

The  extraordinary  extent  and  variety  of  Dr.  Billings'  activities  make 
it  impossible  on  this  occasion  even  to  enumerate,  still  more  so  adequately 
to  characterize  his  important  services. 

From  Dr.  Mitchell's  interesting  sketch,  which  you  have  just  heard, 
of  Dr.  Billings'  remarkable  services  in  the  Civil  war  —  a  phase  of  his 
career  so  overshadowed  by  later  achievements  as  to  have  been  in  danger 
of  oblivion,  had  it  not  thus  been  rescued  for  us  —  it  is  evident  that  even 
as  a  young  army  surgeon,  Dr.  Billings  had  begun  to  manifest  those  qual- 
ities of  skillfulness,  efficiency  and  resourcefulness  exemplified  so 
strikingly  in  his  more  familiar,  later  work. 

Dr.  Osier  has  spoken  of  the  central  and  greatest  achievements  of 
Dr.  Billings'  life,  which  will  perpetuate  his  fame  for  all  time  —  the  build- 
ing up  and  development  of  the  great  library  of  the  Surgeon-General's 
Office  in  Washington  and  his  monumental  contributions  to  medical  bib- 
liography. This  work,  to  which  he  devoted  thirty  years  of  almost 
unparalleled  energy  and  labor,  constitutes  probably  the  most  original 
and  distinctive  contribution  of  America  to  the  medicine  of  the  world. 


MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  HONOR  OF  DR.  JOHN  SHAW  BILLINGS  H 

It  is  remarkable  and  hardly  to  be  expected  that  work  of  this  highly 
specialized,  bibliographical  character  should  have  been  produced  in  a 
new  country  and  by  an  army  surgeon. 

Speakers  who  are  to  follow  will  pay  tribute  to  Dr.  Billings  as  Chair- 
man of  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  the  Carnegie  Institution  of  Washington, 
and  especially  as  the  librarian  of  The  New  York  Public  Library,  in  which 
capacity  since  1896  he  has  done  on  a  larger  scale  a  great,  con- 
structive work  rivalling  in  importance  that  previously  accomplished  in 
Washington. 

It  remains  for  me  to  call  your  attention  briefly  to  certain  other 
aspects  of  Dr.  Billings'  career,  which,  although  in  a  sense  incidental  to 
the  main  work  of  his  life,  are  nevertheless  important.  One  of  these  is  his 
work  in  connection  with  the  construction  and  organization  of  hospitals  — 
a  field  in  which  he  became  our  leading  authority  and  acquired  interna- 
tional reputation. 

Dr.  Billings'  interest  in  hospital  construction  can  be  traced  to  his 
experiences  as  a  surgeon  in  our  Civil  war,  in  the  course  of  which 
there  was  developed  a  new  style  of  building  hospitals,  consisting  in 
a  central  administrative  building  with  barrack-like  pavilions,  either 
detached  or  connected  by  corridors.  In  the  promulgation,  if  not  in  the 
origination,  of  this  method  of  hospital  construction,  known  in  Europe 
as  "the  American  system,"  Dr.  Billings  had  the  largest  share  through 
his  valuable  report  on  "Barracks  and  Hospitals,"  published  in  1870  and 
through  his  work  in  planning  and  describing  hospitals,  especially  the 
Johns  Hopkins  Hospital. 

Dr.  Billings  was  one  of  the  five  eminent  physicians  selected  by  the 
Trustees  to  prepare  essays  regarding  the  best  plans  to  be  adopted  in  the 
construction  and  organization  of  the  hospital  for  which  Johns  Hopkins 
had  provided  the  largest  gift  of  money  which  had  been  made  up  to  that 
time  for  such  a  purpose.  His  essay  was  chosen  as  the  best,  and  from 
1876  to  the  opening  of  the  hospital  in  1889  he  acted  as  the  highly  efficient 
medical  adviser  of  the  trustees  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  Hospital,  whose 
confidence  he  enjoyed  in  the  highest  degree. 

The  building  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  Hospital,  with  its  admirable 
arrangements  for  heating,  ventilation,  isolation,  sanitary  cleanliness  and 
nursing,  and  especially  those  "for  joining  hands  with  the  University," 
as  Dr.  Billings  expressed  it,  in  the  work  of  medical  education  and  dis- 
covery, marked  a  new  era  in  hospital  construction,  for  which  Dr. 
Billings  deserves  the  chief  credit.  When  one  considers  the  influence  of 
this  hospital  upon  the  construction  of  other  hospitals  and  the  valuable 
contributions  made  by  Dr.  Billings  to  the  solution  of  various  hospital  prob- 
lems, when  one  also  regards  the  uses  which  have  been  made  of  this  hospi- 
tal in  the  care  and  treatment  of  the  sick,  in  the  training  of  students  and 


12  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

physicians  and  the  promotion  of  knowledge,  it  is  evident  that  Dr.  Billings' 
services  in  the  field  we  are  now  considering  were  of  large  and  enduring 
significance.  I  esteem  it  a  privilege  on  this  occasion  in  behalf  of  my 
colleagues  and  of  the  trustees  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  Hospital  and  Univer- 
sity to  express  our  sense  of  indebtedness  and  gratitude  to  Dr.  Billings 
for  his  pioneer  work  in  preparing  the  soil  without  which  the  seed  could 
not  have  been  planted  and  ripened. 

For  many  years  there  was  scarcely  an  important  hospital  in  this 
country  to  be  constructed  or  remodelled  concerning  which  Dr.  Billings' 
advice  and  often  active  assistance  were  not  sought.  His  work  in  this 
connection,  added  to  his  experiences  as  an  army  surgeon,  early  drew  his 
attention  to  the  science  and  art  of  sanitation,  in  which  he  became  a  writer 
and  authority  of  eminence,  being  in  certain  directions  our  leading  sani- 
tarian during  the  quarter  of  a  century  from  1870  onward. 

His  publications  in  this  field  related  naturally  at  first  to  military 
hygiene,  and  later  were  concerned  with  "Principles  of  Ventilation  and 
Heating,"  municipal  hygiene,  mortality  and  vital  statistics  and  other 
sanitary  subjects.  Dr.  Billings  was  vice-president  of  the  short-lived 
National  Board  of  Health,  established  by  the  Government  in  1879.  The 
withdrawal  by  Congress  of  support  of  this  highly  promising  service  of 
the  government  set  back,  we  may  believe,  for  many  years  the  advancement 
of  the  public  health  interests  of  this  country. 

Of  fundamental  importance  to  public  sanitation  was  Dr.  Billings' 
work  in  the  collection  and  analysis  of  the  vital  and  social  statistics  of 
the  tenth  and  eleventh  censuses  in  1880  and  1890  —  a  contribution  which 
made  him  our  foremost  vital  statistician. 

When  Dr.  Billings  upon  his  own  application  retired  after  over  thirty 
years  service  from  the  Army  it  was  to  assume  the  professorship  of 
hygiene  and  directorship  of  the  new  laboratory  of  hygiene  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania.  Although  he  was  so  soon  withdrawn  from  this 
position  to  The  New  York  Public  Library  that  this  period  is  hardly  more 
than  an  episode  in  his  career,  yet  he  remained  long  enough  to  demon- 
strate that  his  conception  of  the  organization  of  the  new  department 
was  along  broad  lines  and  gave  promise  of  successful  results. 

Dr.  Billings  was  not  only  the  greatest  of  medical  bibliographers, 
he  was  also  a  noteworthy  contributor  to  medical  history  and  lexicog- 
raphy. He  delivered  a  course  of  Lowell  lectures  on  the  history  of 
medicine  and  he  was  for  several  years  lecturer  on  the  history  of  medi- 
cine in  the  Johns  Hopkins  University,  where  before  the  opening  of  the 
hospital,  he  had  been  lecturer  on  hygiene.  His  elaborate  article  on  the 
history  of  surgery  in  the  "System  of  Surgery,"  edited  by  himself  and  Dr. 
Dennis,  is  probably  the  most  valuable  contribution  to  the  subject  in  the 
English  language. 


MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  HONOR  OF  DR.  JOHN  SHAW  BILLINGS  13 

A  final  word  as  to  Dr.  Billings'  influence  upon  the  medical  profes- 
sion. He  was  a  leader  of  the  profession.  His  name  and  that  of  his 
intimate  friend  of  many  years,  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell,  whom  we  still  delight 
to  honor  as  the  chief  ornament  of  American  medicine,  were  of  all  the 
^physicians  of  this  country  the  two  best  known  in  Europe.  Dr.  Billings  was 
the  one  most  frequently  sought  for  and  chosen  to  represent  this  country  in 
international  medical  congresses  and  public  occasions  of  importance. 
His  leadership  was  based  upon  intellectual  power  and  above  all  upon 
strength  and  integrity  of  character.  He  was  a  singularly  wise  man, 
combining  with  far-sighted  vision  critical  judgment,  the  gift  of  persua- 
sion, and  practical  good  sense.  To  an  incredible  capacity  for  work  he 
joined  a  high  sense  of  duty  and  a  just  appreciation  and  sympathy  which 
secured  the  loyal  devotion  of  his  co-workers.  His  perspective  was  true, 
removed  as  far  as  possible  from  all  narrowness  of  view. 

In  certain  of  his  general  addresses,  notably  those  at  the  Centennial 
Exhibition  in  Philadelphia  in  1876,  at  the  International  Medical  Con- 
gress in  London  in  1881  and  before  the  British  Medical  Association  in 
1886,  Dr.  Billings'  estimates  and  criticisms  of  the  achievements  of 
American  medicine,  while  entirely  fair  and  by  no  means  lacking  in  appre- 
ciation, were  so  frankly  free  from  any  spirit  of  provincialism  or 
chauvinism,  that  they  gave  offence  in  certain  quarters  of  this  country, 
but  he  said  what  at  the  time  needed  to  be  said,  and  the  influence  was 
salutary. 

The  name  of  Dr.  Billings  will  always  hold  a  place  of  honor  in  our 
profession.  As  I  see  in  this  audience  many  of  my  colleagues  of  the 
medical  profession,  I  know  that  they  will  desire  me  to  express  in  their 
behalf  and  in  behalf  of  the  entire  medical  profession  of  this  country,  the 
large  indebtedness  which  we  owe  to  the  life  and  work  of  this  man  of 
large  achievement,  of  high  character,  of  enduring,  beneficial  influence 
upon  this  country. 

Mr.  Cadwalader:  I  have  the  pleasure  to  present  to  you  a  gen- 
tleman who  needs  no  eulogy.    I  present  to  you  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie. 

ADDRESS  BY  MR.  ANDREW  CARNEGIE 

Life  and  death,  the  twin  mysteries  of  all  forms,  from  the  blade  of 
grass  to  the  human  brain  are  ever  crowding  upon  us;  ever  remaining 
unsolved.  We  can  only  bow  in  silence  to  the  inevitable.  Better  so; 
better  so. 

When  one  of  our  circle,  possessed  of  unusual  gifts  and  master  of 
great  agencies  of  progress,  passes  away  and  is  lost  apparently  forever, 
we  murmur  "Why,  oh  why?"  —  no  answer  comes.     We  gather  today 


14  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

upon  such  an  occasion  and  bowing  our  heads  and  hearts  we  murmur 
acquiescence  to  the  stern  decree  of  laws  beyond  our  ken,  which  it  were 
folly  to  question.  We  bow  to  the  inevitable  and  taking  up  again  the 
duties  of  life  which  lie  before  us  we  labor  in  the  path  of  duty  awaiting 
our  summons  hence.  May  we  follow  the  example  of  the  friend  whose 
loss  we  mourn  today.  His  was  a  long  and  arduous  task  resolutely  per- 
formed from  beginning  to  end  for  man's  elevation  and  advancement. 

Beginning  in  1857  by  graduating  in  Miami  University,  then  receiv- 
ing his  degree  in  medicine  in  1860,  he  entered  the  army  and  rose  from 
station  to  station  as  medical  officer  until  called  to  Washington  in  1864. 
He  was  placed  in  charge  of  various  important  works,  each  performed 
in  succession  with  such  masterly  skill  as  to  lead  to  other  appointments 
until  Dr.  Billings  stood  foremost  in  his  wide  domain,  his  crowning  ser- 
vice being  rendered  to  this  magnificent  and  unequaled  library  in  which 
we  now  stand  and  which  must  ever  be  associated  with  his  genius;  than 
genius  we  can  use  no  word  less  awe-inspiring. 

Directorship  in  this  library,  his  crowning  work,  brought  me  into 
close  contact  with  him  whose  loss  we  mourn  and  so  deeply  did  his  talents 
and  ability  impress  us  we  ventured  to  ask  his  advice  upon  founding  the 
institution  of  research  at  Washington  which  has  been  referred  to  here, 
and  here  we  found  him  also  master  as  if  he  had  studied  the  problem  for 
years.  To  him  we  v/ere  indebted  for  its  successful  start  with  Professor 
Oilman  in  command.  Upon  his  resignation  a  successor,  the  present  head, 
was  found  and  recommended  by  Doctor  Billings,  then  Chairman  of  the 
Board  of  Trustees,  and  Professor  Woodward  has  fully  fulfilled  our  most 
sanguine  expectations.  Knowledge  is  said  to  consist  of  two  elements  — 
What  you  yourself  already  know,  and  what  you  know  how  and  where  to 
obtain — of  both  departments  our  dear  lost  friend  was  master.  Apart  from 
his  wonderful  powers  of  the  brain,  his  heart  was  tender,  and  many  a 
tired  o'er-labored  employe  feels  today  he  has  lost  a  loving,  tender  friend. 
He  was  always  just,  always  considerate.    A  man  of  both  head  and  heart. 

Friends,  during  his  long,  useful,  pure  and  unwearied  life  he  set 
all  privileged  to  know  him  an  example  we  shall  do  well  to  treasure  and 
follow;  for  of  him  it  can  be  truly  said,  he  lived  a  kindly  pure  life  above 
reproach,  and  by  faithful  administration  of  great  tasks  committed  to 
him,  surrounded  by  troops  of  friends,  he  left  the  world  a  little  better  than 
he  found  it.  If  the  highest  worship  of  God  be  service  to  man,  there  he 
stands ;  his  service  to  man  has  been  testified  to  by  the  leading  authorities 
in  different  positions  today.  When  shall  we  look  upon  his  like  again? 
We  his  sorrowing  friends  assembled  here  today  to  honor  his  memory 
have  never  known  one  of  whom  it  can  more  safely  be  predicted: 

"If  there's  another  world  he  lives  in  bliss, 
If  there  be  none  he  made  the  best  of  this." 


MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  HONOR  OF  DR.  JOHN  SHAW  BILLINGS  15 

Mr.  Cadwalader:  I  feel  that  among  the  letters  I  have  received 
I  must  read  a  single  letter,  one  from  Mr.  Root  long  a  co-worker  and 
intimate  friend  of  Dr.  Billings. 

LETTER  FROM  SENATOR  ELIHU  ROOT 

United  States  Senate, 
Washington. 

April  23,  1913, 

Dear  Mr.  Cadwalader: 

I  regret  very  much  that  imperative  duties  in  Washington  will 
prevent  my  attending  the  meeting  in  honor  of  Doctor  Billings.  I  wish 
I  could  be  present  to  express  in  some  degree  the  high  honor  in  which  I 
hold  him.  During  many  years  of  acquaintance  and  observation  of  his 
work,  and  especially  through  eleven  years  of  association  in  the  Executive 
Committee  of  the  Carnegie  Research  Institution  of  Washington,  I  came 
to  have  great  admiration  for  his  qualities  and  a  warm  personal  regard 
for  him.  The  breadth  and  variety  of  his  learning,  the  definite  certainty 
of  his  knowledge,  the  catholicity  of  his  interest  in  all  matters  coming 
within  the  field  of  science,  made  his  opinion  of  the  greatest  value.  His 
service  was  devoted  and  untiring.  He  had  intellectual  as  well  as  moral 
integrity,  and  a  rugged  independence  of  character  which  commanded 
recognition  and  respect.  He  came  as  near  as  any  man  I  ever  knew  to 
absolute  independence  of  judgment,  and  he  was  so  simple  and  natural 
and  unhesitating  in  his  expression  that  his  positive  differences  of  opinion 
created  no  irritation.  No  project  or  expenditure  could  pass  his  scrutiny 
by  easy  or  indolent  acquiescence  but  only  as  it  approved  itself  to  his 
experience  and  reason.  Yet  he  was  essentially  constructive  and  progres- 
sive in  his  views  and  wishes,  and  he  was  simple,  modest,  unassuming, 
without  pride  of  opinion  or  personal  bias.  He  never  advertised  himself  or 
vaunted  himself,  and  only  a  few  who  had  the  good  fortune  to  know  him 
well  could  appreciate  what  a  great,  strong,  devoted  and  useful  citizen 
he  was. 

Fewer  still  remember  that  fifty  years  ago  he  was  serving  in  the  field 
in  the  Civil  War  as  a  medical  officer  in  the  Union  Army;  that  he  was 
breveted  Captain,  Major,  and  Lieutenant-Colonel  for  faithful  and  meri- 
torious service  during  the  war;  that  he  began  the  career  of  a  great 
librarian  by  being  Medical  Inspector  in  charge  of  the  library  of  the  Sur- 
geon General's  office,  and  was  virtually  the  creator  of  the  Army  Medical 
Library  in  Washington  and  the  founder  of  the  system  of  medical  educa- 
tion in  the  American  Army.  It  was  this  system  of  education  which  led 
to  such  high  credit  for  our  country  and  such  blessings  to  mankind  through 


16  THE   NEW   YORK   PUBLIC   LIBRARY 

the  work  of  the  Medical  Corps  in  Cuba  in  extirpating  yellow  fever  and 
through  the  sanitation  of  the  Isthmus,  making  the  building  of  the  Panama 
Canal  possible.  He  has  filled  no  great  space  in  the  newspapers  nor  prob- 
ably will  in  history,  and  I  think  he  would  not  care  about  that.  But  I  am 
sure  that  the  high  estimate  set  upon  his  character  and  service  and  the 
affectionate  remembrance  in  which  he  is  held  by  those  who  knew  him, 
who  knew  what  he  was  and  what  he  did,  would  be  most  grateful  to  him. 

Faithfully  yours, 

Elihu  Root. 
John  L.  Cadwalader,  Esq., 

New  York. 

Mr.  Cadwalader:  I  have  the  pleasure  of  presenting  to  you  Mr. 
Richard  R.  Bowker,  editor  of  the"Library  Journal." 

;  ADDRESS    BY    MR.    RICHARD    R.    BOWKER 

We  come  not  to  bury  a  great  man,  but  to  praise  him,  to  declare  that 
his  spirit  cannot  be  buried  in  the  grave.  I  bring  to  the  memory  of  John 
Shaw  Billings,  though  sadly  yet  with  rejoicing,  on  behalf  of  the  American 
Library  Association  of  which  he  was  a  past  president,  of  the  New  York 
State  Library  Association,  of  the  New  York  Library  Club,  of  which  also  he 
had  been  president,  the  homage  of  the  library  profession  and  as  a  trustee  of 
the  sister  library  system  in  Brooklyn,  the  tribute  of  all  who  are  interested 
in  library  work.  Sadly  I  say,  because  his  great  personality  is  shrouded 
from  our  mortal  sight  beyond  the  mists  and  mystery  of  death,  yet  with 
rejoicing  because  from  the  years  that  are  told  there  will  be  abiding  and 
eternal  influence  through  the  years  that  are  to  come.  Dr.  Billings  was 
a  great  librarian  because  he  was  a  great  man.  He  was  a  member  of  the 
executive  profession,  whose  members  —  it  may  be  a  great  banker,  a 
great  merchant,  a  great  manufacturer,  a  great  lawyer,  a  great  bishop,  a 
great  president,  a  great  librarian,  —  are  always  leaders,  commanders  of 
men  and  of  affairs.  He  did  many  things  well ;  he  could  have  done  almost 
anything  well.  He  had  an  instinct  for  books,  the  keen  eye  and  the  sure 
touch  for  the  value  of  them ;  and  this  brought  him  into  that  part  of  his 
life  work  of  which  I  have  to  speak. 

Years  ago,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  describing  a  visit  of  Dr.  Billings 
to  his  private  library  in  Cambridge,  told  how  he  came  into  the  room, 
looked  around,  darted  at  a  book,  which  was  the  most  valuable  volume 
on  the  shelves,  examined  it,  replaced  it,  took  another  survey  and  made 
tracks  for  a  second  book,  which  was  the  second  most  valuable  book  in 


MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  HONOR  OF  DR.  JOHN  SHAW  BILLINGS  17 

the  collection;  and  Dr.  Holmes  twinkled,  "Why,  sir,  Dr.  Billings  is  a 
bibliophile  of  such  eminence  that  I  regard  him  as  a  positive  danger  to 
the  owner  of  a  library,  if  he  is  ever  let  loose  in  it  alone."  But  Dr.  Billings' 
probity  would  stand  even  that  test. 

With  this  instinct  for  books,  when  toward  the  close  of  the  war,  at 
27,  he  came  to  the  Surgeon-General's  Office,  he  had  the  vision  of 
the  growth  of  the  few  hundred  books  of  that  day  into  the  great  medical 
library  which  is  now  one  of  his  monuments,  the  greatest  in  the  world, 
with  its  round  half-million  books  and  pamphlets.  From  this  came  the 
great  subject  catalogue  which  is  his  triumph  in  bibliography  and  from 
this  in  turn  came,  in  association  with  that  other  bibliographical  enthusiast, 
Frederick  Leypoldt,  the  Index  Medicus,  so  that  at  one  time  he  had  going 
on  three  enterprises  which  would  each  in  itself  tax  the  strength  of  any 
one  strong  man.  Our  library  friend  MacAlister  of  London  tells  of  how 
after  the  close  of  a  long  and  arduous  official  day  he  once  found  Dr. 
Billings  "resting,"  on  his  couch,  with  a  monument  of  medical  periodicals 
on  the  right  which  was  slowly  diminishing  while  he  carefully  marked 
the  indexing  of  the  periodical  of  the  moment  in  whatever  language  it 
might  be,  and  made  it  part  of  the  increasing  monument  on  the  left.  This 
was  an  example  of  his  untiring  "rest."  It  was  the  same  library  friend  to 
whom  he  said  once,  when  MacAlister  was  wondering  at  the  extent  of  his 
work,  "I  will  let  you  into  the  secret.  There  is  nothing  really  difficult  if 
you  only  begin.  Some  people  contemplate  a  task  until  it  looms  so  big 
it  seems  impossible.  But  I  just  begin,  and  it  gets  done  somehow.  There 
would  be  no  coral  islands  if  the  first  bug  sat  down  and  began  to  wonder 
how  the  job  was  to  be  done."  This  is  pleasant  illustration  both  of  the 
doctor's  method  and  of  the  genial  humor  of  which  many  knew  little. 

After  his  thirty  years'  work  in  the  Surgeon  General's  Office  and  his 
retirement  from  the  army,  he  took  up,  as  you  have  heard,  what  he  thought 
was  the  final  work  of  his  life,  in  connection  with  the  professorship  of 
hygiene  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  But  a  new  and  final  chapter, 
perhaps  the  greatest  chapter  in  his  life,  was  to  open.  For  in  1895  he  was 
called  to  the  directorship  of  The  New  York  Public  Library,  on  the  Astor, 
Lenox  and  Tilden  Foundations.  It  is  the  business  of  a  board  of  trustees, 
whether  library  or  other,  to  find  the  right  executive  for  their  work  and 
then  to  support  him.  That  the  trustees  of  this  library  did  in  finding  Dr. 
Billings,  and  we  have  here  the  monument  of  the  seventeen  years  of  growth 
which  have  come  so  largely  from  their  wise  decision.  "Si  monumentum 
videre  circumspice." 

He  came  to  this  work  at  the  age  of  fifty-eight,  when  most  men  begin 
to  think  of  resting  from  their  labors.  He  found  the  Astor  Library,  and 
the  Lenox  Library  as  well,  in  archaic  condition,  with  books  shelved  in 


18  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

fixed  location,  with  incomplete  and  incongruous  catalogues,  a  staff  of 
only  forty  persons,  and  short  hours  and  short  shrift  for  the  public.  Not 
satisfied  with  either  of  the  standard  classifications  for  a  large  library, 
he  worked  out  an  individual  system  of  classification  and  arrangement, 
brought  together,  standardized,  completed,  and  unified  catalogues  for 
both  libraries,  and  made  corresponding  development  everywhere.  . 

The  first  thought  of  the  trustees  was  for  an  adequate  central  build- 
ing, and  in  1897  Dr.  Billings  roughed  out  a  post  card  plan  for  this  library, 
which  will  remain  among  its  most  treasured  possessions,  embodying  as 
it  does,  the  essential  features  of  this  great  building,  with  its  remarkable 
co-ordination  in  location  of  the  many  special  libraries  which  it  comprises. 

He  saw  the  need  of  a  wide  branch  system  and  planned  the  consolida- 
tion into  the  system  of  the  eleven  branches  of  the  free  circulating  library ; 
and  now,  thanks  to  the  splendid  donation  of  $5,200,000  for  which  the  city 
has  to  thank  Mr.  Carnegie's  confidence  in  Dr.  Billings  as  his  library 
advisor,  there  are  now  forty  branches,  bringing  together  into  a  central- 
ized system  nearly  all  of  the  lesser  libraries  previously  existent.  At  last, 
two  years  ago,  his  work  was  crowned  by  the  completion  of  this  magnificent 
building,  and  the  remarkable  removal  to  it  of  the  million  volumes  now 
housed  here,  with  a  staff  of  nearly  a  thousand  people  here  and  through- 
out the  branches,  serving  the  public  during  every  working  hour  of  the 
day,  and  with  such  facilities  of  public  service  as  almost  to  realize  the 
dream  of  the  ideal  library. 

Throughout  all  this  his  was  the  master  mind.  He  worked  with 
such  ease  that  it  scarcely  seemed  work  to  others  and  only  his  associates, 
and  those  who  were  nearest  to  him,  knew  fully  the  largeness,  the  fore- 
sight, the  kindness,  and  the  sympathy  of  this  great  librarian. 

It  will  perhaps  especially  surprise  you  to  know  how  intimately  he 
related  himself  with  the  children's  work,  being  the  wisest  and  most 
sympathetic  counselor  which  the  department  had.  In  fact,  all  through  his 
life  he  made  it  his  business  to  know  about  children's  books  for  the  sake 
of  the  smaller  people  of  his  household,  reading  even  the  Elsie  books  with 
them  in  mind.  He  was  so  interested  in  the  "story  telling  hour,"  that 
when  the  National  Academy  of  Sciences  met  in  this  city,  he  begged  the 
head  of  the  children's  department  to  arrange  a  story-telling  hour  for 
their  benefit,  and  so  "Old  Mr.  Kangaroo,"  "Why  the  sea  is  salt"  and 
other  examples  of  evolutionary  folk-lore  delighted  the  wiseacres  who 
came  to  New  York. 

All  through  his  library  work  he  showed  the  most  exact  and  com- 
prehensive knowledge  of  affairs,  large  and  in  detail,  and  he  went  beyond 
this  library  to  co-ordinate  other  libraries  here  and  ever5rwhere.  I  recall 
that  when  the  libraries  of  the  United  Engineering  Societies  were  ready 


MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  HONOR  OF  DR.  JOHN  SHAW  BILLINGS  19 

to  be  unified  in  the  Carnegie  building,  the  engineers  somehow  had  the 
impression  that  the  public  library  authorities  were  rather  offish.  I 
arranged  to  bring  the  chairman  of  the  engineers'  committee  to  a  con- 
ference with  Dr.  Billings  and  almost  the  first  thing  that  the  doctor  said 
was,  "Well,  tell  us  what  you  want  to  do  and  we  will  do  the  other  things," 
out  of  that  came  the  harmonious  co-operation  which  makes  the  great 
engineering  library  across  the  street  virtually  a  part  of  this  great  library 
and  both  of  mutual  benefit  to  all  American  engineers.  He  was  con- 
sulted about  the  choice  of  a  librarian  for  that  library,  and  when  Mr. 
Cutter's  name  was  mentioned,  it  was  most  interesting  to  note  how  much 
he  knew  of  the  details  of  Mr.  Cutter's  life  and  work,  and  how  thoroughly 
he  approved  of  the  suggestion. 

Throughout  the  seventeen  years  he  kept  everyone  in  mind.  Some- 
times he  did  the  work  of  an  official  or  of  a  department  to  know  what 
details  that  official  or  department  was  doing  and  when  there  was  to  be 
a  promotion  he  would  in  passing  through  the  library,  stop  at  a  desk  and 
say  "Your  work  has  been  well  done,  and  there  will  be  a  little  change  in 
your  salary  and  you  will  have  this  or  that  position,"  and  he  left  his  hearer 
with  the  genial  glow  in  his  heart.  Not  many  knew  how  many  of  these 
human  qualities  the  dear  doctor  had,  nor  can  those  of  us  who  knew  him 
well  communicate  this  knowledge  to  others.  He  was  human  and  nothing 
that  was  dear  to  man  was  foreign  to  him. 

We  shall  not  look  upon  his  like  again  —  because  there  is  always 
the  new  man  for  the  new  work,  but  the  new  man  in  the  library  field  must 
always  be  inspired  by  the  example  of  the  splendid  work  which  Dr. 
Billings  has  left  to  the  profession.  Happily  he  was  honored  in  his  life : 
universities  and  medical  societies  all  over  the  world  from  Miami  to 
Buda-Pesth  honored  him.  He  had  perhaps  more  degrees  than  almost 
any  other  man,  except  possibly  Ambassador  Bryce  and  the  Rector  of 
Saint  Andrews,  who  enjoys  the  unique  and  supreme  degree  of  the 
Carnegie  Self-Education  Institute,  the  parent  of  all  the  Carnegie 
Institutions. 

Dr.  Billings  was  first  and  foremost  the  soldier,  if  by  a  true  soldier, 
we  mean  fortitude,  valor,  courage,  persistence  and  all  those  qualities 
which  go  to  make  the  highest  man.  But  he  was  a  soldier  for  the  common 
good,  a  soldier  of  peace,  rather  than  of  war.  He  fought  three  great 
campaigns,  one  for  the  public  health,  one  for  public  enlightenment,  one 
that  closer  personal  fight  with  disease  and  threatening  Death  that  tested 
his  fortitude  to  the  utmost.  He  suffered  in  hospital  more  wounds  than 
most  soldiers  in  the  fiercest  war.  Twice  he  underwent  operations  for 
cancer,  concealing  even  from  his  wife  the  seriousness  of  his  malady  by 
saying  that  he  was  taking  a  hospital  vacation.  In  the  latter  years  of  his 
life,  he  was  probably  seldom  without  pain,  and  sleep  was  to  great  extent 


20  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

denied  him ;  yet  all  this  never  seemed  to  interfere  with  his  work,  and  he 
still  read  a  novel  or  two  after  the  day's  work  as  "the  best  of  soporifics." 
He  had  planned  to  retire  this  very  month,  but  after  all,  he  died,  as 
he  desired,  in  the  harness,  working  up  to  the  last  week.  He  went  to  his 
death  unflinchingly  for  though  he  still  maintained  with  his  associates  his 
fearless  equipoise,  he  confessed  to  a  friend  his  inward  fears  of  the  gravity 
of  the  last  operation.  Part  of  his  discipline  he  got  in  the  army,  but  after 
all  the  discipline  of  his  life  was  not  in  the  army  but  in  the  ordeals  of  peace. 
And  when  we  hear  that  war  is  necessary  as  the  only  school  for  those  great 
qualities,  let  us  have  the  faith  to  believe  that  soldiers  like  Billings,  those 
of  peace  rather  than  of  war,  are  the  men  who  are  to  stand  in  the  making 
of  the  future  as  these  great  libraries  become  the  arsenals  of  progress  and 
the  library  systems  of  which  this  is  the  most  splendid  example,  become 
the  great  schools  for  the  future  of  men. 

CLOSING   REMARKS    BY    MR.    CADWALADER 

We  have  heard  from  various  co-workers  and  friends  of  Dr.  Billings 
as  to  the  various  fields  of  activity  in  which  our  friend  was  engaged. 

Perhaps,  in  closing  these  proceedings,  you  may  permit  me  to  say  a  single 
word  as  to  the  relation  of  Dr.  Billings  toward  ourselves;  I  refer  to 
The  New  York  Public  Library. 

I  first  made  Dr.  Billings'  acquaintance  in  1895,  when  the  various 
arrangements  were  in  progress  for  the  consolidation  of  the  three  libraries 
which  ultimately  became  The  New  York  Public  Library.  At  that  time 
Dr.  Billings  was  occupying  the  position  to  which  reference  has  been  made, 
and  was  gently  reposing,  holding  a  single  office  only,  a  professor  of 
hygiene  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  a  distinguished  office,  but  at 
the  same  time  no  single  place  was  at  all  sufficient  for  the  energy  of  Dr. 
Billings.  The  general  scheme  of  consolidation  had  been  worked  out. 
The  various  and  complicated  legal  and  other  steps  were  in  progress,  and 
the  construction  of  the  building  was  contemplated  upon  this  present  site. 
We  possessed  large  resources,  unlimited  law  and  architecture,  private 
interest,  sympathy,  and  public  support,  and  competent  workers  in  the 
Board  of  Trustees  and  otherwise  to  make  the  scheme  successful. 

What  we  required  was  a  man,  a  man  of  unusual  breadth  of  mind,  of 
character  and  capacity,  around  whom,  as  a  leading  figure,  all  interests 
could  gather,  and  whose  unselfish  power  and  skill  could  fuse  these  invalu- 
able elements,  for  the  public  good. 

As  happens  in  American  life,  that  man  was  found.  He  had  retired 
from  the  army,  and  was  reposing  in  a  professorship  which  he  held  in  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania. 

"The  idle  spear  and  shield  were  hung  up  high." 


MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  HONOR  OF  DR.  JOHN  SHAW  BILLINGS         21 

Dr.  Billings  saw  at  once  the  possibilities  of  the  position,  and  his 
whole  intelligence  leaped  into  activity  the  moment  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania,  with  great  liberality,  released  him  from  its  service. 

This  stalwart,  grave  and  somewhat  distant  man  —  stalwart  in  mind 
as  he  was  in  body  —  found  at  last  the  opportunity  of  concentrating  his 
energy,  learning  and  experience  upon  his  final  and  perhaps  his  most 
attractive  task  in  life. 

How  well  he  performed  that  office  we  well  know.  To  attempt 
here  to  enumerate  the  successive  steps  is  quite  impossible.  It  is  enough  to 
say  that  he  prepared  the  competition  for  the  exterior,  and  with  his  own 
hands  the  plans  of  the  interior  arrangement  of  this  building  as  it  now 
exists.  He  organized  the  system  by  which  the  reference  library  was 
enlarged,  catalogued  and  classified.  He  surrounded  himself  with  a 
devoted  staff,  and  he  himself  became  the  active  living  head.  We  caught 
the  infection  of  his  energy,  and  he  would  have  been  a  poor  soul  who  made 
no  effort  to  trot  on  in  the  rear  as  he  strode  forward  with  gigantic  steps. 

With  clear  foresight,  he  saw  that  reference  work  alone  would  not 
sufficiently  attract  or  satisfy  the  public  eye  and  purse,  and  that  a  circu- 
lation system  must  be  added  to  reach  all  classes. 

On  making  his  plan  public,  every  agency,  including  every  faith  and 
sect  engaged  in  the  circulation  of  books  with  the  aid  of  public  funds, 
stepped  aside  and  permitted  this  library  to  assume  its  burden  and  its 
duties. 

By  the  generosity  of  Mr.  Carnegie,  made  effective  by  the  liberality 
and  constant  support  of  the  City  of  New  York,  the  broadest,  most  com- 
prehensive and  most  effective  library  system  in  the  world,  quietly  and 
almost  unheralded,  assumed  its  place  and  entered  on  its  usefulness. 
But  power  and  learning  alone  would  never  have  achieved  full  success. 
Dr.  Billings,  however,  possessed  the  capacity  of  binding  his  co-workers 
to  him,  trustees  and  staff;  of  satisfying  all,  not  only  that  he  was  unhesi- 
tatingly and  without  qualification  to  be  trusted,  but  that  he  possessed  a 
capacity  for  friendship  and  affection,  and  that  all  who  desired  could 
find  in  him  a  sympathetic  friend. 

As  for  myself,  I  buried  in  his  grave  at  Arlington  one  of  a  rapidly 
narrowing  circle  of  my  dearest  friends. 

He  had  no  enemies ;  he  could  have  none  in  the  atmosphere  in  which 
he  moved.  He  had  no  enmities,  although  he  did  not  "suffer  fools 
gladly,"  and  regarded  with  amused  contempt  humbugs  and  pretenders 
who  posed  before  the  public. 

In  fact,  I  fear  the  learned  Doctor  at  times,  and  perhaps  often,  regarded 
boards  of  trustees,  committees,  architects  and  such  like  as  obstacles  cun- 
ningly interposed  to  retard  his  progress  on  the  path  of  life. 


22  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

It  is  a  happiness  to  us  to  know  that  after  a  life  of  almost  romantic 
achievements  he  was  allowed  to  witness  the  completion  of  his  final  task 
in  the  establishment  and  successful  administration  of  this  system. 

With  all  his  varied  powers  and  capacities  we  certainly  shall  not  look 
upon  his  like  again. 

Within  these  walls  and  in  this  assemblage,  surely  it  is  true  that 
"He  is  not  dead  who  giveth  life  to  knowledge." 

What  lesson  may  we  learn  from  simple  life  and  patient  death,  from 
courage  and  capacity,  from  devotion  to  one's  fellow  man? 

A  great  teacher  has  taught  us  what  our  duty  is : 

"  *  *  *  Yet  I  argue  not 

Against  Heav'n's  Hand  or  Will,  nor  'bate  a  jot 
Of  Heart  or  Hope;  but  still  bear  up  and  steer 
Right  Onward  *  *  *" 


Ladies  and  gentlemen,  these  proceedings  have  now  come  to  a  close. 
It  remains  solely  to  thank  these  distinguished  gentlemen  who  have  done 
us  the  honor  to  testify  to  the  life  and  services  of  Dr.  Billings,  and  to 
thank  you  all  for  your  attendance. 


APPENDIX 

Many  letters  of  regret  and  appreciation  were  received  from  friends  of 
Doctor  Billings  who  were  invited  to  be  present  at  the  meeting  but  were 
unable  to  accept.  These  letters  were  too  numerous  to  be  read  at  the 
meeting  or  to  be  printed  here.  The  selections  printed  below  give, 
however,  an  indication  of  their  tenor  and  spirit : 

FROM    HIS    EMINENCE,    JOHN    CARDINAL    FARLEY 
ARCHBISHOP  OF  NEW  YORK 

I  am  glad  to  avail  myself  of  this  opportunity  to  tell  you  how  pleased 
I  am  that  this  mark  of  respect  is  to  be  given  to  the  memory  of  one  whom 
I  have  known  long  and  in  a  measure  intimately. 

My  respect  and  regard  for  Dr.  Billings  grew  as  the  years  went  on, 
and  the  news  of  his  death  came  to  me  as  that  of  a  dear  friend.  Our 
acquaintance  began  before  I  became  associated  with  the  Public  Library 
and  even  then  I  learned  to  admire  his  gentle  and  courtly  character,  not 
less  than  his  love  and  remarkable  knowledge  of  books  and  their  makers. 
Everything  I  saw  in  Dr.  Billings  since  I  became  a  member  of  the  Board 
of  Trustees  went  to  increase  my  first  impressions  of  him. 

FROM    SIR    HENRY    BURDETT,    K.C.B,,    K.C.V.O. 

It  is  a  matter  of  deep  regret  to  myself  that  it  is  impossible  for  me  to 
be  present  at  the  Memorial  Meeting  for  the  late  Dr.  John  Shaw  Billings 
on  the  25th  instant.  I  have  only  received  the  notice  by  this  (Saturday) 
morning's  post. 

Few  men  in  our  generation  have  done  better  or  more  useful  service  to 
science,  to  medicine,  to  the  sick  and  to  all  who  are  associated  with  illness, 
or  to  the  uplifting  and  betterment  of  the  health  of  the  peoples  of  the 
world.  I  have  been  associated  with  Dr.  Billings  for  quite  forty  years  in 
hearty  co-operation  and  lifelong  friendship  and  sympathy. 

I  enclose  a  memoir  which  records  my  experience  of  the  fruits  of  his 
work  from  actual  knowledge.  Anything  that  I  can  do  in  any  way  to  help 
the  Trustees  to  make  the  commemoration  of  the  life  and  work  of  John 
Shaw  Billings  take  a  form  which  will  prove  a  permanent  living  force  for 
those  who  come  after  will  be  gratefully  and  thoroughly  done  to  the  utmost 
of  my  powers. 

Kindly   express  my  deep   and  heartfelt   regret  that   it  should  be 

impossible  for  me  to  be  present  and  take  part  in  the  proceedings  on  the 

25th  instant. 

[23] 


24  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 


FROM    DR.    E.    C.    RICHARDSON,    LIBRARIAN    OF 
PRINCETON    UNIVERSITY 

The  few  librarians  that  we  have  known  who  have  actually  made  a 
distinctive  mark  in  modern  library  history  have  differed  very  widely  in 
the  character  of  their  contributions.  Dr.  Billings  belongs  among  those 
who  have  sketched  out  big  propositions  in  a  broad  way  rather  than  to 
those  whose  chief  interest  is  the  perfecting  of  the  details  of  organization 
or  service  to  users,  but  in  many  particulars,  and  I  fancy  in  every  line  where 
time  permitted,  his  attention  to  the  utmost  last  minute  detail  was  quite 
as  extraordinary  as  the  breadth  of  his  sketching,  and  indeed  the  catalogue 
is  a  monument  to  both  these  aspects,  in  which  his  capacity  and  perform- 
ance must  be  described  as  genius. 

FROM    MISS    HELEN    E.    HAINES,    FORMERLY    ASSISTANT 
EDITOR    OF  "THE    LIBRARY    JOURNAL" 

It  was  kind  of  you  to  include  me  among  those  invited  to  the  Com- 
memorative service  for  Dr.  Billings,  and  I  am  sure  you  know  how  deeply 
I  regret  my  inability  to  share  in  this  expression  of  affection  and  admira- 
tion. Ever  since  1897,  when  I  first  came  to  know  him.  Dr.  Billings  was 
one  of  my  best  and  most  helpful  friends,  and  I  went  to  him  again  and  again 
(and  never  in  vain)  for  counsel  in  some  perplexity  about  library  affairs  — 
ever  with  a  deepening  sense  of  his  wisdom,  the  wonderful  range  and 
precision  of  his  mind,  and  the  essential  sweetness  and  kindliness  that  were 
woven  into  the  fabric  of  his  nature.  During  the  last  five  years  especially, 
his  warm,  encouraging  sympathy  was  a  constant  help  through  many  dark 
hours,  and  I  came  to  feel  a  deep  affection  for  him  that  will  always  be  a 
happy  memory. 

In  the  library  world  his  work  seems  to  me  to  stand  alone,  quite 
unparalleled,  greater  and  more  far-reaching  during  the  last  fifteen  years 
of  his  life  alone  than  Panizzi's  during  his  whole  career.  Those  of  us  who 
remember  vividly  what  the  public  library  situation  was  in  New  York 
when  the  problem  was  placed  in  his  hands  —  the  diverse  tangled  threads 
of  the  many  little  libraries,  unrelated,  inadequate  and  ill-supported;  and 
the  resistant  warp  of  the  two  great  reference  foundations,  indurated  by 
years  of  isolation  from  vital  public  contact  —  know  well  that  it  was  the 
achievement  of  the  impossible  that  crowns  his  lifework,  in  the  wonderful 
Public  Library  system  of  to-day.  Somehow  his  results  seemed  to  be 
obtained  almost  imperceptibly ;  nothing  was  ever  heralded,  no  whirlwinds 
of  preparation  ever  shook  the  air,  but  little  by  little  every  part  seemed  to 
slip  into  its  place  in  the  whole. 


MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  HONOR  OF  DR.  JOHN  SHAW  BILLINGS         25 

Year  after  year  behind  the  green  baize  doors  in  the  dingy  old  Astor 
one  found  him  at  any  hour  of  the  day,  almost  always  a  listener,  silent  or 
laconic,  with  now  and  then  a  gleam  of  blue  lightning  from  under  his 
drooped  eyelids  or  a  slowly  uttered  dryly  whimsical  sentence.  In  the  last 
letter  I  had  from  him,  written  not  long  before  his  death,  he  said :  —  "Do 
you  remember  a  little  poem  by  Moira  O'Neill,  called  'The  Ould  Lad'?"  — 

"Ye  see  me  now  an  ould  man,  his  work  near  done, 
Sure  the  hair  upon  me  head's  gone  white; 
But  the  things  meself  consated  'or  the  time  that  I  could  nm, 
They're  the  nearest  to  me  heart  this  night." 

We  all  know  how  great  the  things  were  that  he  "consated"  and  that  his 
work  of  service  to  the  world  will  never  end. 


FROM    CRESSY    L.    WILBUR,    CHIEF    STATISTICIAN, 
BUREAU    OF   THE    CENSUS 

Vital  Statistics  was  a  subject  very  near  to  Doctor  Billings's  heart.  In 
my  work  of  promoting  adequate  registration  of  vital  statistics  for  this 
country  I  have  deeply  realized  the  fundamental  service  that  Doctor 
Billings  rendered  to  the  cause  while  in  charge  of  the  mortality  statistics 
of  the  Tenth  and  Eleventh  Censuses.  Although  he  had  long  withdrawn 
his  personal  attention  from  this  work,  all  of  us  still  in  the  field  had  a 
feeling  of  his  kindly  and  interested  supervision,  and  I  most  sincerely 
regret  that  circumstances  prevent  my  attendance  as  a  representative  of 
the  special  work  of  the  Census  to  which  he  gave  so  much  attention,  and 
in  which  his  labors  constitute  a  lasting  memorial. 


MINUTE   ADOPTED   BY   THE   AMERICAN    LIBRARY 

ASSOCIATION   AT   ITS   ANNUAL   CONFERENCE 

AT  KAATERSKILL,  NEW  YORK,  JUNE  25,  1913 


JOHN    SHAW    BILLINGS 

April  12,  1838 -March  11,  1913 

A    member    of   the   American    Library   Association    1881-1913 

Its  President,  1901-02. 


It  is  seldom  that  the  death  of  an  individual  removes  from  two  pro- 
fessions a  unit  of  singular  power  in  each.  But  such  was  the  loss  in  the 
recent  death  of  John  Shaw  Billings :  a  scientist  in  a  department  of  science 
intensive  and  exacting,  a  librarian  rigorously  scientific  in  a  profession 
broadly  humane.  To  the  former  he  made  original  contributions  which 
constituted  him  an  authority  within  special  fields;  but  also,  in  his  great 
Index-Catalogue  of  Medical  Literature,  one  which  assured  certainty  and 
promoted  advance  in  every  field,  —  and  left  the  entire  medical  profession 
his  debtor.  As  a  librarian,  having  first  brought  to  preeminence  the  profes- 
sional library  entrusted  to  him,  he  was  called  to  the  organization  into  a 
single  system  of  isolated  funds  and  institutions;  achieved  that  organiza- 
tion; and  lived  to  see  it,  under  his  charge,  develop  into  the  largest 
general  library  system  in  the  world,  with  a  possible  influence  upon  our 
greatest  metropolis  of  incalculable  importance  to  it,  and,  through  it,  to  the 
welfare  of  our  entire  country. 

The  qualities  which  enabled  him  to  accomplish  all  this  included  not 
merely  certain  native  abilities  —  among  them,  penetration,  concentration, 
vigor,  tenacity  of  purpose  and  directness  of  method,  —  but  others  devel- 
oped by  self-denial,  self-discipline,  and  a  complete  dedication  to  the  work 
in  hand.  It  was  through  these  that  he  earned  his  education  and  his  scien- 
tific training;  and  they  hardened  into  habits  which  attended  him  to  the 
end  of  his  days,  when  he  concluded  in  toil  that  shirked  no  detail  a  life 
begun  in  toil  and  devoted  to  detail. 

Such  habits,  a  keen  faculty  of  analysis,  and  a  scientific  training  kept 
him  aloof  alike  from  hasty  generalizations  and  from  the  impulses  of  mere 
emotion ;  while  his  military  training  induced  in  him  three  characteristics 
which  marked  alike  his  treatment  of  measures  and  his  dealings  with  men : 
incisiveness,  a  distaste  for  the  superfluous  and  the  redundant,  and  an 
insistence  upon  the  suitable  subordination  of  the  part  to  the  whole.    In  this 

[26] 


MINUTE  ADOPTED  BY  THE  AMERICAN  LIBRARY  ASSOCIATION        27 

combination,  and  in  the  knowledge  o£,  and  power  over,  men  which  accom- 
panied it,  he  was  unique  among  librarians;  in  his  complete  lack  of 
ostentation  he  was  unusual  among  men.  His  mind  was  ever  on  the  sub- 
stance, indifferent  to  the  form.  A  power  in  two  professions,  to  have 
termed  him  the  "ornament"  of  either  would  have  affronted  him ;  for  he  was 
consistently  impatient  of  the  merely  ornamental.  Any  personal  ostenta- 
tion was  actually  repugnant  to  him;  and  he  avoided  it  as  completely  in 
what  he  suffered  as  in  what  he  achieved:  bearing,  with  a  reticence  that 
asked  no  allowances,  physical  anguish  in  which  most  men  would  have 
found  ample  excuse  from  every  care. 

If  such  a  combination  of  traits  assured  his  remarkable  efficiency, 
it  might  not  have  seemed  calculated  to  promote  warm  personal  or  social 
attachments.  Yet  there  was  in  him  also  a  singular  capacity  for  friend- 
ship :  —  not  indeed  for  impulsive  and  indiscriminate  intimacies,  but  for 
those  selective,  deep,  steady,  and  lasting  friendships  which  are  proof  of 
the  fundamental  natures  of  men.  And  however  terse,  austere,  and  even 
abrupt,  his  manner  in  casual  relations,  where  a  really  human  interest 
was  at  stake  he  might  be  relied  upon  for  sympathies  both  warm  and  con- 
siderate, and  the  more  effective  because  consistently  just  and  inevitably 
sincere. 

The  testimonies  to  these  qualities  in  his  character,  to  these  powers, 
and  to  his  varied  achievements,  have  already  been  many  and  impressive. 
The  American  Library  Association  wishes  to  add  its  own,  with  a  special 
recognition  not  merely  of  the  value  to  the  community  of  the  things 
which  he  accomplished,  but  of  the  value  to  the  individuals  in  the  example 
of  a  character  and  abilities  so  resolutely  developed  and  so  resolutely 
applied  to  the  service  of  science  and  the  service  of  men. 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 


This  book  is  due  on  the  date  indicated  below,  or  at  the 
expiration  of  a  definite  period  after  the  date  of  borrowing, 
as  provided  by  the  rules  of  the  Library  or  by  special  ar- 
rangement with  the  Librarian  in  charge. 

DATE  BORROWED 

DATE  DUE 

DATE  BORROWED 

DATE  DUE 

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New  York   (City)      Public   library. 
LlemoriaLmejeting:  in  honor  of  the 


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